The King’s Highway

This gentle slope was part of a King’s Highway constructed in 1741 and known locally as the Goshen Road. When the Ellison’s stone house was built here in 1754, it faced this heavily traveled highway.<br> Over this road various grains were brought to the Ellison gristmill. Products from the mill were carted to the Ellison dock at New Windsor, where they loaded onto a family-owned sloop destined for the Ellison wharf in New York City. From there, they were shipped overseas or to other colonies.<br> When parts of the highway were formed into the New Windsor and Blooming Grove Turnpike in 1801, an L-shaped section in front of John Ellison’s house was by-passed. Today, this fragment of a once busy highway leads toward the ruins of the Ellison’s gristmill and to the stone-arched bridge that carried the road across the Silver Stream and on toward Goshen.